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They've got ties to 'School Ties'

Local men remember when Damon, Affleck & Co. came to town

By David Pevear, dpevear@lowellsun.com

Updated:
01/06/2013 07:36:39 AM EST

LOWELL -- The studio executives sounded certain these kids would become stars. Smart, talented and punctual, all Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell and Brendan Fraser needed now was to look like football players.

That became the responsibility of Lowell's Dennis Scannell, hired by Paramount Pictures in 1990 as "football coordinator" for the filming of "School Ties" after delays caused two earlier choices to pass.

Scannell, then the head football coach at UMass Lowell, called in Mike Esposito, a Wilmington High and Boston College legend who a year earlier had stepped down as Billerica High coach.

"We were told by the Paramount people that these kids were going to be big stars," says Esposito. "But we had no clue."

When filming of the football scenes began at the Middlesex School in Concord in 1991, O'Donnell was 21, soon to become famous playing opposite Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman." Damon was 20, his Cambridge buddy Affleck 19, six years before their big breakthrough with "Good Will Hunting." Fraser was 22, his most recent starring role having been as a caveman unfrozen in "Encino Man."

"We just thought they were good guys," says Rob Aylward, a former Tewksbury High and UMass Lowell quarterback who became leader of the football extras. "Come to find out they all become big stars."

Released in 1992, "School Ties" is not really about football. Set in the 1950s, the movie's principal theme is anti-Semitism confronted by a working-class Jewish kid named David Green, a star quarterback recruited from Scranton, Pa.

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, to a prestigious New England private school so it could defeat the rival that dominated it for years.

Executive producer Danton Rissner wanted the few football scenes to look genuine. The greatest challenge was Fraser, the movie's star. He looked the part until he had to actually play quarterback. Former NFL running back Esposito was instructed to work with Fraser, who was well-trained in the theater but could not throw a football.

"The first time I ever saw Mike Esposito close to tears," says Scannell with a laugh.

"He wasn't the most gifted of athletes," Esposito says about Fraser, who sent him Christmas cards for several years afterward. "But he worked real hard. He eventually became proficient at least at looking like a quarterback."

Locals get the call

Most of the extras in the football scenes were former local high school players. A year earlier a casting call was held in Boston. But Scannell says filming was delayed after Johnny Depp turned down the lead, and then the producers waited for Fraser to complete another commitment.

When Scannell came on board, he convinced producers it would be more convenient using Lowell-area extras. He called Aylward, who had in 1989 finished an outstanding career at UMass Lowell.

"Dennis told me to get 40 guys together the next day to run a full practice at Cawley Stadium in front of the Paramount producers," says Aylward, 44, now a Tewksbury High assistant coach. "I called everybody I knew. We were supposed to look like high school kids. So all my hairy friends got the boot."

Mike Thomas of Dracut, then an assistant on Scannell's UMass Lowell football staff, recalls the instructions from Paramount to find "2,300 white Anglo-Saxon-Protestant-looking 1952 kids" to be extras in school and football crowd scenes.

"So we went to Groton-Dunstable High, Westford, Tyngsboro, Dracut ... and told them we were doing a movie," says Thomas.

The producers wanted the actors to bulk up, to look more like football players. So in the summer of 1991, Damon, Affleck, O'Donnell, Fraser, Cole Hauser, Randall Batinkoff and others in the cast worked out at UMass Lowell with Charlie Rozanski, who was then an athletic trainer at the school.

Actors and extras bonded like an actual football team, says Scannell, 61. Rissner even instructed Scannell to organize two "team" banquets, which were held at the Radisson Chelmsford and the former Hughes Restaurant in Lowell.

Practices at Cawley Stadium in Lowell prepared for two weeks of filming at the Middlesex School in Concord.

Stuntmen take a hit

Due to Fraser's football shortcomings, Aylward for a while was the star's double during game scenes. Aylward's body-type wasn't quite right, though. Director Robert Mandel then brought in former Syracuse quarterback Bill Scharr, who is seen in the movie from behind, diving over the goal line as Fraser for the winning score.

"They're bringing in stunt guys to run the ball because they think it will give it a more realistic look," he said.

The locals were offended.

"The first play they run with a stuntman is a toss sweep," says George Scannell, 52, a former UMass Lowell fullback who was an assistant on his brother Dennis' staff. "We had this kid, Ron Anderson, who was an All-New England cornerback for us from Tewksbury. A small kid, but great leverage. He hit the stuntman, picked him up, and then everyone else came in and speared the guy."

"And they weren't even filming it yet," says Thomas.

Aylward recalls rehearsing one play 10 times, with a stuntman doubling for Damon, insisting to be hit at full speed.

"I nailed him. He was done," says Aylward. "(Former Tewksbury teammate) Joe Vecchi nailed another stuntman. Matt Damon was saying, 'Do I really want to be in this scene?'"

"Our guys killed them," says Dennis Scannell. "When we broke for lunch the three stuntmen were lying under a tree. Our guys were looking like they won the Super Bowl."

Scannell fooled the director into believing Thomas, there as a crowd extra, was an experienced high school and college ref. Thomas was not, but kept his mouth shut while being driven off in a golf cart to the wardrobe department. His pay immediately jumped from $100 a day as an extra to the top of the non-union scale, $1,500, on filming days. Though Thomas is not listed in the credits (Scannell and Esposito are), he is the referee in the movie signaling the winning touchdown. Thomas' image also appeared in some movie promotional posters.

Karaoke night

During filming, the actors stayed at the Radisson Chelmsford and rented a get-away apartment at Princeton Properties on Princeton Boulevard in Lowell.

"They were around (the city). But nobody knew who they were," says George Scannell. "Imagine now?"

Thomas remembers the "team" going out with actors for a karaoke night at the China Blossom in North Andover.

"These were all talented kids," he says. "O'Donnell could sing. A couple could play the piano. The people in the place were like, 'Who are your friends?' "

While much of this was happening, life was imitating art. The UMass Lowell football team, also coached by Dennis Scannell, was going though its 1991 regular season undefeated. The actors even showed up for a Saturday night game at Cawley Stadium against Plymouth State, a 10-3 UMass Lowell victory on Scannell's 40th birthday.

The River Hawks won the New England Football Conference title before losing to Union in the NCAA Division 3 playoffs to finish 10-1. George Scannell says the coaches from 6 a.m. to noon attended filming at the Middlesex School, "then came back and coached UMass Lowell."

The agreement was all movie talk ceased in the car "as soon as we got to Chelmsford center," he says.

George Scannell appeared in the movie as a fullback for the rival school, taking a hand-off from Jeff Vecchi, a former Tewksbury High quarterback, and scoring a touchdown.

"That 7-0 lead lasted for about six days ... until they completed the shoot," Scannell says with a laugh.

Those who buckled up those 1950s helmets without facemasks and smacked into the future of Hollywood believe their former "teammates" would remember them. Aylward helped to coach Fraser's throwing mechanics. Two years later Fraser starred as baseball pitching phenom in "The Scout."

"Matt Damon and Cole Hauser were probably the best athletes," says Aylward. "Brendan Fraser, well, he was a really a theater guy."

"Every one of them was a good kid," says George Scannell. "That's probably why they made it (big). You could see how sharp a kid Matt Damon was. He introduced every one of us to his family members like we were stars."

Esposito, 59, caught a mild case of the Hollywood bug. He befriended script supervisor BJ Bjorkman and collaborated on a screen play about two football players -- one black, one white -- in Boston during school desegregation.

"Five producers looked at it," says Esposito. "But you have to be out there in L.A. pounding it and pushing it for them to really take a look."

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